Internet Advertising
Free Advertising at Search Big Daddy.
Is it any good?
On this page:
A log of my experience using Search Big Daddy for free advertising.
This log is chronological: the latest information is at the bottom of the page.
Preamble:
You can waste a lot of money with pay-per-click advertising. So I signed up at "Search Big Daddy" because they promised that users could get free advertising.
When you sign up at Big Daddy you get your own 'search engine portal'.
You also get 'Advantage Points' when you search using your search page. You can use these points to buy pay-per-click advertising on Big Daddy search.
You also earn points for reading the latest news from Big Daddy, which will be emailed to you (fairly frequently).
Log of Experience
with using Search Big Daddy
In just over three months of reading regular emails from Search Big Daddy I found I had collected about 1800 of these 'Advantage Points'.
I was not particularly excited about that UNTIL I tried out the pay-per-click advertising feature.
I experimented with placing some bids on some keywords. I expected that with the free points I had collected I might be able to run an ad for a couple of days.
To my surprise, I found that the cost (in 'advantage points') for bidding on some of the keywords was often just a fraction of one point.
I mean, 0.01 points for something that could have a minimum bid on AdWords from 30 cents to maybe $5.00.
In April 2007 I organized my first ad. Obviously it remains to be seen whether I get many impressions and visitors. I will update here when I have some stats to report.
It's a no-frills interface when you bid for keywords and place ads at Big Daddy. Don't expect much by way of analysis.
Seasoned users of Google AdWords or Yahoo pay-per-click services would be used to a sophisticated interface and lots of useful stats and reporting.
You don't get any of that at Search Big Daddy.
There is a lot more to Big Daddy than just what I have mentioned above. Big Daddy includes an entire social networking thing with blogs, link-posting/tagging, video advertisong, friends lists, e-cards and so on.
I am not interested in any of that. I don't use the internet for anything social. However, you do get more 'advantage points' for using those things.
Update July 2007
At some stage betwen April and July the number of advantage points you get for reading emailed news from Search Big Daddy went up from 50 to 200.
I placed some ads. I was the highest bidder on all but one or two of my keywords.
According to Google Analytics I got 9 visitors from Search Big Daddy in the two months that my ads have been running. The stats on the reporting system at Search Big Daddy say that I have had no clicks, no visitors and have used up none of my points.
It doesn't quite add up, but there it is. I expect it is because there is rounding in the stats and they don't reflect mere hundredths of a point.
I have logged in twice to check that I am still the highest bidder on my chosn keywords. Both times I had to increase my bid a tiny bit on a few words in order to remain the top bidder.
There was only one keyword for which somebody else was bidding a lot (about 100 advantage points). But for all the others the bids were still a fraction of one point.
Well, I decided that since the advertising evidently does not bring visitors to my site, and since I have now accumulated well over 10,000 advantage points, I would spend them on another 'Top Position' on the search site.
A 'Top Position' is something you get for free when you first join Search Big Daddy. Having a Top Position means that you own the keyword you claimed and will always appear in a "Featured Site" box at the top of the search results.
This "Featured Site" box is actually an image (probably an I-Frame I suppose) of your page, appearing above the search results.
This would be a pretty good place to have your site showing if:
- There were a lot of people using the search site
- There were a lot of searches relating to the topic of your site
- People clicked on your link
None of those conditions seem to be met at present.
On the other hand, Search Big Daddy appears to be constantly growing, aims to get much bigger and provides users with incentives (advantage points) for using the search site.
So getting to be the sole owner of a bunch of keywords – and getting that top position forever, for free – might pay off in the end.
Meanwhile, I won't be putting up any more pay-per-click ads because it is too time-consuming for minimal results. But I will probably acquire more top positions by spending my advantage points every time I accumulate 999 of them for reading emails. It might be worth doing in the long term.